


Braid

by theramblinrose



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: A prompt Fill, Caryl, F/M, Post Season 10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:27:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25938133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theramblinrose/pseuds/theramblinrose
Summary: Caryl, Oneshot.  Post Season 10.  Carol needed someone to braid her hair before bed, and Daryl knew how to braid.  Rated for Dixon language.
Relationships: Daryl Dixon/Carol Peletier
Comments: 2
Kudos: 34





	Braid

AN: This is a little one shot inspired by a prompt that someone sent me.

I own nothing from The Walking Dead.

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! 

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Another fight was through. Another foe vanquished. Another proverbial chapter was done.

Of course, that also meant that another chapter was just beginning, and whatever it may bring was still a mystery. 

Alexandria was all but in complete shambles. The fences stood, mostly, and would do well enough to keep the Walkers out until they could be reinforced. Many of the buildings stood, though a fire had consumed some of them. The Hilltop was gone. The Kingdom was gone. 

People would be deciding what they were doing, and where they were going. People were already talking about leaving as soon as the sun came up. Daryl had overheard snatches of at least fifteen such conversations on his way back to the house from the gate. 

Daryl was tired. His body ached—that much was true. He’d been lucky. He’d sustained only minor injuries, all things considered. He had a few burns that needed to heal, and he’d been hit in the head hard enough to promise a headache for at least two days. 

But more than being physically tired, he was simply tired of this—of all of it. He was tired of the running, and the fighting. And, lately, he was tired of not really being entirely certain what he was fighting for or if he really wanted to fight at all.

He knew the truth. He didn’t want to fight. Not anymore. That was the problem. At least—he didn’t want to fight for something he didn’t feel was worth fighting for.

There were other things, he realized, that he should have fought harder for in his life. Maybe now was the time to leave off fighting as he had done—with another war behind him—to start fighting for something that meant something.

She knew that he was coming. He’d told her he’d check on her when he saw her leaving the infirmary. He still had a few things to do, but he would check on her. She’d told him not to worry, as she always would, but he’d meant what he said. 

At the house, Daryl bathed and dressed in clean clothes. He checked on Lydia. The girl was asleep, and she was sleeping hard. This had been trying for her in more ways than one. If she stayed here—if they stayed here—it would always be hard for her. Nobody, Daryl felt, would ever let her forget who her mother had been or what group she’d travelled with. The Whisperers were gone now, but their memory would never fade entirely.

Daryl knew what it was like to live with ghosts. 

Carol did, too. 

Her door was cracked. A warm light came from inside. She was awake and, despite her declarations that he didn’t have to worry about her and he didn’t have to come, she was clearly expecting him. 

Daryl pushed the door open. She was sitting on the edge of her bed that allowed her to see the mirror—a mirror that hadn’t been cleaned in some time—and her face was visibly damp. She saw him in the reflection of the mirror as he stepped into the room. He closed the door behind him, not asking her if that’s what she wanted. She didn’t protest. Daryl walked around the bed and stood at the end of it, close to her, but still somewhat behind her. 

“Wanna talk about it?” He asked.

She wiped at her face with her uninjured hand. 

Henry was dead. Daryl knew that her heart was absolutely shattered. His own heart ached just to know the pain that she had been through—and was still going through. She wanted family. A home. Motherhood. She deserved that more than anyone else in the world. Everything got destroyed and broken, though. She was always losing. She was always being forced to fight just to survive.

They both were.

And she was exhausted, too. Daryl could see it on her face.

“I can’t—braid it,” Carol said, her voice coming out forced. “My hair. I like to braid it before bed. And—I can’t.” 

Daryl knew that this wasn’t about her hair. It wasn’t even about her hand. Her hand had been cut, but it would heal. Luckily, she’d missed most of the major bits and pieces that would have left her permanently disabled. All she needed to do, now, was to simply let the stitched-up cut heal. Knowing Carol, she’d be back using it within a day, but it was fresh, and she was tired.

“Hey,” Daryl said, “Don’t cry, OK? I’ll do it. I’ll braid your hair for you.” 

“You can’t braid hair,” Carol said with a hint of amusement.

“The hell I can’t,” Daryl responded. “I can braid rope. It’s the same damn concept. Turn around. I can’t reach you like that. You got somethin’ to tie it with?” 

Carol swiped at her face again. The tears had stopped for the moment and she brushed the last of them away. She handed Daryl a hair tie, and she shifted her body so that Daryl could easily take his place behind her. He ran his fingers through her silky hair—a little more than necessary—to comb out the tangles and divide it into fairly even sections.

“They’re all dead now,” Daryl said. 

“Yeah,” Carol said. 

“You feel—better?” 

“As I’m ever going to feel,” Carol said. Daryl understood what she was saying. “I thought it would make me feel—something. Something more. Mostly I’m sorry for everything I’ve caused everyone else.” 

“Another fight,” Daryl said. “Another fucking war. It was bound to happen. That ain’t on you. That’s all we do, right? Fight? All you an’ me…and Lydia…all any of us have ever done. Fight one enemy or another for the right to just fuckin’ live.” 

“I’m tired,” Carol breathed out.

“Me too,” Daryl agreed. He was slow in braiding her hair. Her hair was long, but not nearly long enough for him to take the amount of time that he was taking. He wanted to stay there, with her, in her attic room. He wanted to keep his fingers in her hair. He didn’t want the moment to end, so he feigned slowness.

“Henry said to me, one time, that…you let your hair grow out when you were married to Ezekiel because you felt safe,” Daryl said. “Different than when you were with Ed.” 

“Ed used to—pull my hair,” Carol said. “To hurt me. To control me. Then, one day, I just—shaved it all off when he wasn’t home. He couldn’t grab it. He couldn’t use it against me. He was furious.” 

“You felt safe enough with Ezekiel to let it grow out?” 

“I knew that he wouldn’t hurt me,” Carol said. 

Daryl worked her hair in his hands. 

“You like it better long or…?”

“I think I wanted to grow it out because I could,” Carol said. “But—I like it either way. I just—wanted to feel like I could have it long.” 

“I like it any way you wear it,” Daryl said. He wondered how she would take it. He let his eyes flick toward the mirror where he could catch glimpses of her expression. She smiled to herself. His chest loosened a little, and he smiled to himself, too. “If—you felt safe with Ezekiel…I guess I still don’t understand…” Daryl said. He stopped speaking, fastened the hair tie, and dropped the braid over her shoulder to let her see that it was done. She reached and touched it with her uninjured hand. She stroked the braid that he’d just finished.

“You did a beautiful job,” she mused. “Better than I do.”

“I told you I could braid,” Daryl said. 

“I might have to ask you to my braid my hair more often,” she said, turning so that she could face him. She gazed up at him with those big blue eyes and everything inside him practically trembled. 

“Any time…you want me too,” Daryl offered.

“What don’t you understand?” Carol asked.

“Hmmmm?” 

“You said you didn’t understand,” Carol said. “What—don’t you understand?” 

“Oh…” Daryl said. “Just—if you felt safe with Ezekiel…why aren’t you married to him anymore?”

Carol stared at him for a moment—a long moment. He looked away, finally, to break the eye contact between them, and she looked away as well. When he looked back at her, she was staring at her bandaged hand as it rested in her lap. She didn’t answer him right away. 

I heard him talkin’ about leavin’ tomorrow—a lot of people are,” Daryl said, continuing to speak when she didn’t speak. “They asked him about you. If you were going with him.” 

“I’m not going with Ezekiel,” Carol said. “I couldn’t stay married to him, Daryl. It wasn’t fair to him.”

“What wasn’t fair?” Daryl asked.

Carol looked at him. The crease between her brows made it look like she was practically begging him to read her mind—to understand her.

“I never loved Ezekiel,” Carol said. “Not—like that. Not like he wanted me to love him.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I couldn’t.” 

“Why not?” Daryl asked.

Carol laughed to herself, but it wasn’t a heartfelt and sincere laugh. 

“Because I already loved someone else,” Carol said. “There wasn’t any room for him. I was already in love.” 

Daryl’s heart thundered in his chest. For years—for nearly a decade, he was sure—he’d loved Carol. He’d convinced himself that she couldn’t, didn’t, or wouldn’t love him—not like that. He’d convinced himself that he wasn’t good for her. She needed more, and she deserved more, than he could ever give her. 

Yet he’d climbed the stairs to her attic bedroom with one true purpose in mind tonight, and he practically felt dizzy as his brain suggested to him that it might not be an entirely foolish hope.

“Carol—I came up here to tell you that…Lydia and me? We’re leavin’ tomorrow. When everybody else leaves that’s going. We’re going, too. But—we’re not going with everybody else. We’re gonna—see where they’re going, and head off in the other direction.” Carol was staring at him. Her mouth was partially open, her lips were parted. She was focused on his words. Something was making her look slightly pained. “I’m tired of fighting and, half the time, of not knowin’ what I’m fightin’ for or…whose war each of ‘em really is. If we’re off on our own, at least I always know what I’m fightin’ for. And Lydia—she ain’t never gonna be fully welcome here. She ain’t never gonna escape who her Mama was.” Daryl licked his lips. Suddenly, getting air into his lungs was harder than he recalled. He fought back a moment of panic that came with the irrational belief that he couldn’t breathe. He gathered himself together. The confession would either end with things being as he wanted them to be, or with things being how he never wanted to imagine them, but at least he’d have an answer. “I came to ask you to go with us, but I understand if…you don’t want to do that.” 

Carol stared at him for what felt like an eternity. Then she stood up. She stood in front of him. Like him, she’d scoured herself clean after the fight. Her skin was pink from scrubbing. Her eyes were red from the smoke, and the tears, and the exhaustion.

She smiled softly at him. 

“I couldn’t love Ezekiel, Daryl, because…I already loved you.” 

The impact of those words—those beautiful, amazing words—was like a stone dropping into Daryl’s stomach. It felt like they couldn’t possibly be real.

“You mean that?” 

She laughed to herself and shook her head. She leaned forward and brought their lips together. Daryl wasted no time in catching her face in his hands. He pulled her as close to him as he could. He held her there. He held onto the kiss like he’d held onto braiding her hair earlier—afraid for it to end, only to never begin again.

Finally, she pulled loose from him.

“I mean it,” she said. 

“I love you,” Daryl said. “I love you—I have…forever.”

“You haven’t even known me that long,” she said, some teasing in her voice. She smirked at him. He loved it when she teased him.

“I haven’t,” he admitted. “But—I still feel like I loved you anyway.” 

He pulled her face to him again. Hungrily, he kissed her once more like he had the first time. She wrapped her arms around him, and the kiss broke when she smiled against his lips. 

“Does this mean you’ll go with us?” He asked.

Carol held up her hand, bandaged as it was.

“I have to,” she said with a teasing smile. “I’m gonna need someone to braid my hair before bed.”


End file.
